at the end of it all
by gacrux11
Summary: Near doesn't feel like a victor.


Note: This may be edited when I finish my Death Note marathon. It's been years since I last watched it so uh. This is basically a warm up for future fics I suppose? Run-on sentences/rambling abounds. Alludes to L/Light and Mello/Near.

* * *

When Near sees Kira dead, sprawled across the cement and staring up into nonexistence, he doesn't feel like a victor. He feels like he's lost a lot more than he's gained in the scheme of things and it frustrates him to know that nothing he does will ever change that fact. He knows he hasn't really done a whole lot when it comes right down to it, either. He could never have defeated Kira on his own; not without L pushing Light to the brink of his sanity and certainly not without Mello and Matt inadvertently working with him to gain some informative leverage over Kira.

Near considers the way L died, trapped in the arms of his murderer and prime suspect while his heart palpitated over and over again. He wonders if that's what he wanted because Near, after reviewing what was left of L's database, realized a very critical piece of information. Something regarding L and Light and unforgiving attraction that compelled the two of them. He wonders if whatever was left of L's heart broke in two or if it shattered into a thousand little, irreparable pieces.

He wonders belatedly if L realized that he had a heart to break in the first place.

Near remembers how totally indomitable, how ceaselessly _infinite,_ L seemed. He was like an icon and a deity to the orphans attending Wammy's. He was once untouchable in their young minds; the one who would never, ever fail. And yet, he had. The way even L succumbed to the most human of emotions reminded Near that, no matter who you are or what sort of standing you claim in the real world, even wannabe-Gods and the world's greatest detectives can fall prey to impulsive emotions. L probably wouldn't have died if he thought twice about allowing a murdering psychopath to have intimate access to the machinations of his mind, and Light likely would have succeeded if not for his loss of mental stability following the murder of the single human being he might have cared about. The story of L and Light is a dramatic tragedy complete with star-crossed lovers, murderers, and meddlesome Gods of Death. Someone could write a best seller on it, honestly.

Near's thoughts stray toward a tangent that he really doesn't want to consider, but ends up pondering anyway. He thinks he might have been about to fall in love once. His spidery fingers curl around the finger puppet he possessed of Mello and he doesn't flinch. He's been over this. He's gotten over this. The finger curled in his hair tugs taut anyway, pulling straight to the root to try and derail that undesirable train of thought. He has to end it before it crashes headlong into the barrier that prevents him from thinking about what a handful of undesirable contingencies snatched away from him; _tore _away from him, like those irrelevant coincidences had any right to his should-have-been's at all.

He grips the puppet a little tighter and locks down those thoughts with a sudden vengeance. He's meant to be analyzing the end of it all, not grieving for something that might have been if they all had just a little more time.

Matsuda might be saying something to him but Near is lost to the world. His mind is centred now on the battle, the one he knows for a fact will define his short career as a detective thus far, and he wonders how one man – no, boy, because that's all Light Yagami was in the end – could go from being such a promising mind to a desensitized serial killer.

Then he supposes he's already got the answer, in the form of the death note that the last shinigami had taken away with him. The great evil that death notes are, he thinks, should never fall into human hands. He now knows as a firsthand witness that they spoil minds and leave otherwise intelligent, moral human beings in a state of mental disarray. Near doesn't feel guilty about the humiliating death that Kira the mass murderer suffered, but he does feel vague pity for Light Yagami, the boy who could have been such a great asset to the world instead of the monolithic criminal that he became.

He thinks perhaps he can blame the shinigami for the way it all turned out, but even monsters have their motives and Near has never been apt to passing the blame around. It happened, it's over, and that's all there is to it. He knows it would do him no good to go looking for explanations when ultimately he's already aware that he could never find them. Answers didn't exist for cases like this, and neither did any form of understanding.

The only thing he needs to know is that Light Yagami died the day he gave into the evil of the death note and Kira died today, just ten minutes previous. Both of them are gone forever, just like L, Watari, Mello, Matt, and the thousands of faceless victims that the death note claimed. They're gone forever and now, even with Roger at his side as Watari had been for L, Near feels like he understands what loneliness truly is. He's always known the definition but he's never experienced it; not like this anyway. He doesn't have any recollection of his parents or past family so all he's ever known is Wammy's House, Mello's childish drive to beat him, Matt's feigned indifference to anything but video games, and how much he adored L's invincibility. He never did realize how much he had because he never cared to understand how he would feel should it all be ripped away from him.

He has none of that anymore, courtesy of the dead boy staring up at him with eyes that spoke of undignified terror and defeat.

Frankly, Near doesn't really want to feel like he dislikes Light, because he doesn't. He never knew the real Light; a genius in his own right that fearlessly matched L for every step, sneer, or thought he conjured. All he knew of the oldest child in the Yagami family is that he turned out to be Kira, and that Kira was a megalomaniac with a messiah complex several miles wide. Perhaps if Light's desire for a better world had been focused earlier in life, his sense of justice wouldn't have become so construed. Ironically, Near considers the fact that Light's father might have realized his own son's genius and prevented Light from suffering such withering boredom. Light would have been far better off in a setting like Wammy's, which specializes in dealing with gifted children; designates itself to preventing the apathy that readily consumes world-conscious people like Light Yagami. People who could aid the cause but are otherwise ill-equipped to do so.

It's too late now, though, and maybe it was too late right from the beginning. He thinks maybe Light Yagami was always destined to serve as an example of what not to do when you come into contact with otherworldly materials.

Yet, despite his destiny-involved speculations, Near still can't help himself from feeling like it all started because of some stupid, irrelevant coincidence. Like a shinigami tempting fate by nonchalantly tossing his death note down to the mortal world just to alleviate some of his own boredom.

Of course, that would be a ridiculously illogical conclusion to come to so Near disregards it. Instead, he moves to leave the warehouse knowing he will try and fail to forget the lingering scent of death that clings stubbornly to his skin.


End file.
